building things

Today is May 27th, 2010…that never gets old.

So, Tell Them That You Saw Me (which I’m realizing is kind of a very Miranda July-esque title…funny how subconscious influences work on us) is being built.  Julie, Maryam, Loren, Shawnrey, and Anna are all pretty much on fire. I’m learning not to fixate so much on identifying dominant themes, and instead trusting the work to kind of reveal itself as it will.

Now that Julie’s back from Croatia, we’ve been having really good rehearsals. I’ve been consciously trying to keep the level of focus up in these rehearsals, which has been a new-ish tactic for me; I tend to really let whatever is happening in the room kind of unfurl. And the last evening-length project that I made (Total Facts Known) definitely had a summer-camp element of socializing to it that became infrastructural to what the piece was. This time however, things feel different. Shawnrey, Julie, and Maryam are all in entirely different psychological spaces as performers, and the four of us know how to get stuff done, so we’re moving quickly. And Loren and Anna are such a seamlessly logical pair to add into this and both so seasoned and brave and rigorous…it’s just been really a pleasurable and productive work environment so far. There’s also something about not having any boys around. And that’s all I’m going to say about that right now, because I’m not fixating on the gender politics of this work as much right now. It’s purposeful, and it’s about allowing myself to be surprised and be wrong and be taught by the process and by the ensemble of folks making this with me. So…yeah.

In any case, our first work in progress showing was crazy hard for me, but it seriously UNLEASHED a new determination to avoid judgment and future-tripping, and just to make the damn thing. And now we’re deep in it.

Just to document, it feels like the themes that are emerging are:

1)explorations of codependency via spatial composition

2)duets of disclosure; the dynamics that exist between sets of two

3)cultural locations of trauma…and what happens when you explain yours to someone

4) lounging meditations; picnics

5)a desire/need/insistence on being felt and seen and above all…remembered.

it feels like there’s this way that the work keeps coming back to these scenarios where these women appear to be inside of a very structured and rational sets of tasks/directions, but they find ways to make mundane moments explode into really charged and curious expressions of individual or group pain/pleasure/panic/stoicism, etc…

I wouldn’t be surprised if the work that we show in August just ends up being about people in vast and empty places, trying to make an impact on one another in order to fill someone (anyone) with the experience of who they are. The Beckett text (‘Waiting for Godot’) still guides me alot in the activites and exercises that we do in rehearsal.

So…things are wonderfully open-ended at this point. But in other news: I am THRILLED to add a few folks to the team:

Erika Chong Shuch is performing in the piece.

Mica Sigourney is designing the looks for the performers.

I am lucky.

here’s an excerpt from a Meg Stuart piece called ‘Do Animals Cry’ that is inspiring me right now:

i especially love the section with the kid coming between mom and dad. christ.

and here’s some beautiful pictures of Maryam, taken by Jon Rivera (jonrivera.com)

love,

jesse